Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscopy, and its picosecond/femtosecond subclass Ul-
trafast Electron Microscopy, is an emerging field in instrumentation science. It attempts to
combine the nanoscale spatial resolution of transmission electron microscopes with the temporal resolution of modern ultrafast lasers. In this thesis, I present my contributions to this young
field. These include a novel model for simulating the dynamics of ultrafast electron pulses in
electron microscope systems, design criteria for constructing such a system, and theoretical and
experimental groundwork geared towards selecting a useful photocathode for electron pulse
generation. I also present the prototype ultrafast electron microscope system being built at
UIC. 

The source repository for this work is available at https://github.com/jberger/Thesis